Category: Miles

  1. United has a 25% incoming transfer bonus for hotel points, registration required. The most valuable program for this promotion is Marriott Bonvoy (the first time in recorded history that someone wrote this seriously) which will transfer at a ratio of 1,200:700 when points are moved in 20,000 mile increments.
  2. Qatar Avios has a 30% incoming transfer bonus for Citi ThankYou Points through June 30, which makes the Citi → Qatar transfer ratio 1,000:1,300

    Qatar usually posts bonus Avios within a couple of minutes of transfer, though the terms and conditions say it could take 6-8 weeks. There’s a joke in there.
  3. The Citi ThankYou Mastercard, which is unfortunately no longer available for new applicants, sent new beginning of month offers:

    – Make eight purchases of $75+ for a $80 statement credit, once a month through August (total $240)
    – Make five purchases of $75+ for a $65 statement credit, once a month through August (total $195)
    – Earn 1,000 extra ThankYou Points for $500+ purchases, up to two times through June 30

    (Thanks to Shmuel, birt, and Tommy)
  4. American Express Membership Rewards has a 20% transfer bonus to Marriott Bonvoy through June 30, making the transfer ratio 1,000:1,200.

    For those keeping score at home, this is an absolutely terrible value, but there is utility in (1) top-offs and (2) resetting mileage expiration, especially for those without a stash of Ultimate Rewards which still has 55% transfer bonus.
  5. The Incomm gift card sites have fee-free $50+ gift card promo codes:

    – MasterCardGiftCard.com: Mastercards with code DAD26
    – VanillaGift.com: Visas with code VGDAD26
    – TheGiftCardShop.com: Visas, Mastercards, AmExs with code DADSDAY26

    I feel like they’re trying to tell us that something is imminent with their promo code names, but what do I know? Limits on these sites are $10,000 per rolling 24 hours and they won’t earn points or count for a sign-up bonus with American Express cards.
  6. The US Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Senate Committee (USBHUASC I guess?) is exploring the Bilt 2.0 launch uhhh process, and they’re requesting a response by June 9.

    There’s a joke in here too, but I’m definitely not going to be the one to make it. (Thanks to David)

Happy Tuesday friends.

This sentence was said twice (!) before the Bonvoy value sentence was uttered a single time.

  1. AA has stopped releasing space for partner non-stop award redemptions within 144 hours of departure. Workarounds:

    – Hidden city ticketing
    – Use AA miles
    – Book at T-144.01 hours out of spite

    This affects all cabins too.
  2. Bank of America added credit card referral links for some accounts via the mobile app only. Currently first party personal cards are the only options, the referrer gets $100, and each account is limited to five referrals annually.
  3. The Rove shopping and travel portal has a 50% transfer bonus to Turkish Miles&Smiles through June 30. With this transfer bonus, United flights to Hawaii have good pricing again with the program:

    – Economy continental US → Hawaii: 16,667 Rove Miles
    – Business continental US→ Hawaii: 26,667 Rove Miles

    If you don’t yet have a Rove account, use a fellow churner’s referral link and make their day.
  4. Staples stores have fee-free $200 Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.

Also, yes, some people got credit line increases on some of their credit cards this weekend and somehow that’s big news elsewhere. Cool, let’s go content monster!

Next up on the content monster: Allan Savory had two views in 1947.

  1. The Barclays JetBlue Premier Mastercard has an increased sign-up bonus of 100,000 TrueBlue points after $5,000 spend in 90 days, and the $499 annual fee is not waived for the first year. They’ve also made negative changes:

    – 25 Tiles award for status is now at the end of your cardmember year
    – Basic economy tickets no longer get BlueHouse lounge access with this card
    – Companion fare statement credits post after travel is completed

    Strange flex by Barclays the week after they lost their AA card portfolio to Citi, but ok.
  2. The Citi AAdvantage Globe Mastercard, which continues to be the stupidest Citi AA card, has an increased bonus of 90,000 AAdvantage miles after $5,000 spend in four months.
  3. Two airline portals have Mother’s Day shopping bonuses, expect more before Sunday:

    – Alaska Atmos Shopping: 1,200 points for $400+ in spend through May 11
    – United MileagePlus Shopping: 2,500 points for $400+ in spend through May 11

    Giftcards.com’s terms and conditions now vary across portals, but none preclude these bonuses.
  4. SoFi Crypto is $120 cash back or 12,000 points at Rakuten for new SoFi Crypto accounts, provided that you buy $30 of crypto. SoFi will also award between $5 and $1,000 of crypto “randomly” for new accounts through June 30.

    SoFi churns are a thing friends.
  5. The AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue program updated its 24-month mileage expiration policy: Now any mileage earned will reset the expiration clock, regardless of source.

Happy Tuesday!

Next SoFi innovation: “randomly” assigned haircuts.

  1. Chase has a new transfer bonuses for the end of April:

    – 20% to Air Canada Aeroplan, making the ratio 1:1.2
    – 70% to IHG, making the ratio 1:1.7

    One of these is a good deal, which one is left as an exercise to the reader.
  2. Capital One has a 30% transfer bonus to Japan Airlines MileageBank through the end of April, which makes the transfer ratio 1:0.975
  3. The Bank of America Alaska Atmos cards have new offers different than the new offers from a few days ago:

    – Summit: 100,000 miles and a 50% flight discount after $6,500 spend in 90 days
    – Ascent: 80,000 miles and a 50% flight discount after $4,000 spend in 120 days
    – Business: 85,000 miles after $5,500 spend in 90 days

    The 50% discount has to be flown between September 8 and November 18 with lots of other asterisks, so cool I guess. (Thanks to Jerry)
  4. Mixed data-points are coming in about Lululemon physical stores implementing new gift card rules to presumably combat American Express Platinum exact value cashouts. The rules:

    – Gift card face values must be in multiples of $50
    – One credit card per gift card purchase
    – One gift card per customer per day

    These aren’t implemented at the register level though, so your success level may be tied to your rizz level. Data points specifying rizz are needed to confirm.
  5. March’s Chase Air India offer for 10% back on $100-$500 in spend has a new, April version. The March warning still applies: The best game for this one is to not fly Air India under any circumstances, ever, which should make your game clear.
  6. Chase Pay Yourself Back has several changes for Q2:

    – Personal: grocery stores, pet stores, veterinaries, annual fee, and select charities
    – Business: select charities

    Businesses don’t need cash-back I guess?
  7. If you like glamping and have a Chase Hyatt card, register for Hyatt’s promotion for 20 points per dollar at Under Canvas and ULUM locations for stays between June 1 and September 8.
  8. American Express is ending two relationships:

    – The Amazon Business card portfolio is moving to US Bank in August
    – They’re ending transfer to Etihad Guest at the end of June

    Reportedly American Express dumped both with the cliche, “It’s not you, it’s me”, because creativity is hard.
  9. AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue has released its April promo rewards for discounted award travel. US cities include: New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Miami, Detroit, Boston, Atlanta, San Diego, Austin, Orlando, and San Francisco.

    I didn’t see any promo award business class availability in the two cities I checked which is worse than normal.

Happy Thursday!

Fun fact: Thanks to the Lego+Lulu partnership, your $75 can be cashed out for two bricks instead.

I’ve split today’s post up into (1) interesting items, and (2) other, I guess?

  1. Kroger stores have 4x fuel points on third party gift cards other than Amazon and flexible fuel cards, and on fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards. Both promotions are running through Tuesday, April 7.

    For reasons no one has been able to discern, fuel points are worth quite a bit more than normal right now.
  2. The American Express Graphite charge card has been released, and American Express’s random number generator for the sign-up bonus is in full swing:

    – $1,500 (or $2,000) sign-up bonus after $50,000 spend in six months
    – $295 annual fee
    – 2% cash back everywhere, (except 5% on AmEx Travel flights and hotels)
    – Cash back is not convertible to Membership Rewards

    If you don’t see the heightened bonus, try VPNs, incognito browsers, mobile, letting the application timeout and reload, or summoning SideShowBob233. This card replaces the infamous Plum card, also a charge card.
  3. Two Incomm gift card sites have fee-free gift cards:

    – VanillaGift.com: No purchase fees on Visas with code VGEASTER26
    – MasterCardGiftCard.com: No purchase fees on Mastercards with code EASTER26

    Clearly this is because of the lack of oil flow through the Strait of Hormuz.
  4. Delta has an award sale to its Asian destinations, but especially Taiwan and Hong Kong, running through today. Economy flights are 30,000-50,000 miles round trip, and in theory there are sale Delta One fares but they’re not exactly widely available so I wasn’t able to verify pricing.

And:

  1. American Express Business Gold and Business Platinum cards will soon have an annual $300 ChatGPT credit. Before you get excited, they’re likely for the two user $600 annual ChatGPT business plan.
  2. Cathay Pacific is devaluing long-haul business class redemptions by 3%-5%.
  3. JetBlue is reportedly shopping around for buyers, despite assuring everyone they weren’t last week. Since United CEO Scott Kirby said just last week that United wasn’t interested in buying JetBlue at all, there’s a good chance that United is currently in advanced discussions with JetBlue (or maybe I’m just cynical about Kirby).
  4. Bilt added Wyndham as a 1:1 transfer partner. In a sea of bad ideas in travel hacking, transferring more than a de minimus number of Bilt points to Wyndham is a shark sized bad-idea.

Happy Thursday friends!

More shark-sized bad ideas.

We’re going to keep it short and sweet today:

  1. Chase has a 20% transfer bonus to British Airways, Ibera, and Aer Lingus Avios through March, making the transfer ratio 1:1.2. Because you can transfer Avios between airlines too, this is effectively a transfer bonus for Qatar, FinnAir, and Vueling.

    There’s a small issue on the redemption side: Qatar flights aren’t flying at the moment. For that matter, neither are non Avios airline Emirates flights as of this writing.
  2. Capital One has a 30% transfer bonus to Preferred Hotels I Prefer through April 1, making the transfer ratio 1:2.6.
  3. AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue has March promo rewards for travel booked in March and flown by August 31. The list of promo reward US cities is huge, which should tell you something about US European summer travel demand. Those cities are: Orlando, Seattle, Miami, Detroit, Chicago, Portland, San Diego, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Atlanta.

    I searched each of these cities for business class availability and found only a single business class seat at low level during the promo period, which should also tell you something about European summer travel demand. This makes the transfer ratio nearly 1:0.
  4. Staples stores have fee-free Mastercard gift cards through Saturday, “limit nine per customer” which practically speaking means limit nine per transaction as long as you’re a schmoozer. Fan favorite golden liquidation Costco is a popular outlet for these.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.

Have a nice Monday friends!

Head of FlyingBlue promo rewards explains why there’s a single promo business class seat.

  1. Barclay AA cards will become Citi AA cards on April 26. What to know:

    – Your balance will transfer to Citi
    – Barclay cards will work after the transition until you activate your Citi card
    – Citi card will have a new account number
    – The Barlcay variants will be converted to the Citi lineup, sorry Silver card holders*
    – Authorized user cards will be reissued too

    If you’re Citi shut, will this transition get you back in? We’ll see, but #citigonnaciti.
  2. Capital One has a 30% transfer bonus to JAL MileageBank through February 28, bringing the transfer ratio to 1,000:975.
  3. Chase has a 50% transfer bonus to Marriott Bonvoy through February 28 which makes the transfer ratio 1,000:1,500.

    Let’s ask a rhetorical or philosophical question, whichever you prefer: What do you get when you turn an awful transfer ratio into a really bad transfer ratio?
  4. The Fairwinds Business Visa 1.5x everywhere cards have a heightened, tiered sign-up bonus:

    – $500 after $5,000 spend in 90 days
    – $1,500 after $50,000 spend in 180 days

    The cards carry no annual fee. If you haven’t figured out how to join banks or credit unions in another state, it’s probably time to experiment. (Thanks to DoC)
  5. Staples stores have fee-free $200 Mastercards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.

Happy Monday!

*I guess sorry Silver holders of all types (too soon?)

MEABNOTE: I’ll be going on a blogging vacation at the end of the year and there won’t be any daily posts between December 15 and December 31, at least none from me. We may have guest posts during that period, but that depends on you sending me some. On January 1(ish), we’ll celebrate with the 2025 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs.

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Travel Tuesday were all good to manufactured spenders, but companies collectively decided that the next day should be called “Woeful Wednesday”. The punches kept coming with devaluations:

Surely there was some good news out there yesterday too, right? Well, Meijer tried to cheer us up with 50,000 MPerks points with a $500 third party gift card through December 16, but they limited it to one to MPerks account so here we are.

United tried to devalue business class meals with this, but it didn’t work because literally anything other than the old meal is an improvement.